Articles

The connection between content and cosmology (seriously)

We all learn when we’re younger some ideas about where the universe comes from. The most widely understood idea is the “Big Bang Theory.”

The idea is fairly simple (albeit mind-bending). In the beginning, there was a singularity. All of the universe’s matter was densely packed into this singularity and, through somewhat unclear mechanisms of the universe, that singularity experienced a reaction that, suddenly, so rapidly expanded that it expunged all of the stardust, plasma, and building blocks of the universe and, with it, the physical laws and behaviours of that universe. A universe that, even today, is still expanding.

When is a lie not a lie? When it’s a game.

Not long ago, my colleague Blaine came across a fascinating case study in deceptive content strategy.

The short story is this:

VanMoof, who manufacture and ship high-end street bicycles, had a business problem. The bikes they made with great care were too-frequently damaged during the shipping process. Since they did not own the shipping process, they were left to wonder, “what can we even do?” What they did was print a television on the side of each shipping box. Shipping damage dropped by 70-80 percent.